News having recently reached my ears of a troupe of performing “Gentleman Ne’er-do-wells” giving themselves the grandiose name of The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing, who have of late been Turning a fair few Heads, chiefly among the lower orders and the varied Forms of Scientists, Slatterns and Scum of London’s East End, I despatched a young Boy, who had been lurking around my Table for scraps of Food, to the local Market, armed with a shiny sixpence, with which to purchase their latest Offering and, of course, whose Change he could keep for himself, to do with as he will, it being nearly Christmas and the seed of Christian Charity having been planted in my manly Bosom. On his return, I set up my new Steam-Powered Musical Performance Contrivance, and retired to the

Two oddities from the pacific North-West USA’s favourite oddball ethnodelic forgers of all things conjured up from an alternate world music scene. Side one’s “Themes From The Motion Picture Man With The Green Gloves On” is a slice of solemn gamelan’n’drone in their usual temple of the weird mode, all chimes and rumbling percussion interspersed with feedback and other signs of electronic life. As the drift becomes choral and the motion fritters into stoned wafts of sound, it’s almost possibly to smell the incense, inhale the smoke machine tendrils and feel the confusion which greets the many-robed ensemble as they continue their vocation to befuddle and bemuse.

But flipping to the other side of the 7” finds that “Theme From The Science Fiction Television Show

The first Faust record I owned was on vinyl and now they have another release on the shiny black stuff. This time its a limited edition 7-inch collaboration with Dälek and is a taster of an album which will appear later this year. Collaborations appear to be part of the current Faust direction and it would seem to be a productive area to explore.

Given the relative brevity of the two sides its difficult to see what the larger picture of this merger of two fairly disparate units will look like. But from listening to this small sample it looks as though it will be a creative coalition. On Part 1 there are some characteristic Industrial grindings going on around the distorted anger of Will Brooks‘ rapping. There is a strong sense

“Son Of Three” finds The Breeders in ginding guitar-pop mode – but when have they ever been anything else? – chugging along their melodic road with carefree automobile enthusiasm. The soundtrack to a cheery buzzing taxi road movie where the lyrical concerns are as obscure as they are self-assured and disposably neat. Since the theme to Buffyalways sounded lie one of The Pixies‘ later Surfadelic instrumentals, it’s only appropriate that Kim Deal and company rework the tune into… something almost exactly like the original. Still, nice fade out.

Finally, the live version of “Safari” from The Melkweg in Amsterdam sounds suitably like the band have been sampling the local wares as Deal mutters through the song with an air of

Abfahrt Hinwil‘s contribution to the Expanding RecordsEVS Series clicks and wheezes to life with “Links Oben”, built around a distracted melody constructed from synthetic bells. The undercurrents gurgle, fizz and whirr with biomechanical trills, keeping the electronica sweetly chilled. “The Light” starts off langorously swirled, rotating on a synthetic textural axis while deep down a bass tone generates vibrations.

A gradual insertion of ticks and echoed clicks passes through, merging seamlessly with environmental sounds in the classic ambient sequence of “was that on the record, or outside?” remarks. Warm and enveloping, “The Light” slips easily from audibility with hardly a trace, but a slight sense of absence remains.

Tucked away on this seven inch disc of transparent red plastic is one of Black Heart Procession‘s mini masterpieces of melancholic glorying in the sadness of things in general and the passing of time in particular. “Love Sings A Sunrise” coasts on a slow-turning beat and a lambent shimmer of electronic detritus, with Pall Jenkins‘s mournfoul voice declaiming his lost love as the band back up in the background, or possibly another room entirely. To the plangent chimes of a sad guitar, the song unwinds its sorrowful way to drown sorrows in booze and self-reproach, expressed quietly in the piano strokes of eventual rising redemption. It’s a throughly beautiful misery from a band who know exactly how to make the heart bleed without giving self-pity a bad name in the process, and one to be treasured.

The seven inch single, that ancient hallowed artifact: Conduit of commerce, copper coin of pop song, object of reverence and disposable frisbee. Once in a very rare while one will come along to download into your daytime consciousness and unconscious reverie: A hook, a lyric and a skilfully-turned bassline, a drumming of the fingers on public transport or a bout of air guitar in private lodgings. How strange then that the single I am here to review should be an instrumental by a synthesizer trio.

Liverpool’s “Sonic No-Wave Electronic Frazz Punk” trio Kling Klang have taken the hoary old format and injected it with an anarchistic Modernism, all jagged edges and square wave aggregates. Split between the 45rpm “Rocker” and the 33rpm “Vander”, this is a definitive statement of intent. The opening crunch of a mechanical

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